This invention relates to a presentation display apparatus utilizing computers.
In various presentations made in lectures, classroom or other analogous situations, speakers explain their topic or subject matter before the audience, often relying upon the audio-visual aids such as graphs and diagrams, so as to improve the audience's understanding. It is, therefore, possible for the speakers to effectively provide more interesting presentation before the audience, while relying upon such audio-visual aids.
Heretofore, a slide projector, overhead projector and the like have been employed as display devices for assisting the speaker to deliver a speech. These devices are initially prepared by the speaker so that characters and/or images are projected on the screen through these display devices. However, a longer film preparation time, poorer operability in a "frame" feed time during presentation and higher cost, for example, are involved, inflicting a greater burden on the speaker.
In recent years, attempts have been made for the speakers to prepare explanative diagrams and graphs with an aid of computers in place of the aforementioned display devices and to project them onto, for example, a display screen. In this case, screen editors, for example, of a computer are utilized in the preparation of a screen image as distinct from the conventional film image preparation. During presentation, the screen image is explained with the use of a pointing device, such as a mouse, digitizer or joystick, because the cursor can be freely moved to a proper location within the image screen.
In the computer-assisted display device, in order to switch the screen image now explained to the next screen image, a function select menu representing "next page", "preceding page", etc. is displayed on the image screen and, through the movement of the cursor across the image screen, the menu item is indicated on the screen in which case that indication is made by the operation of, for example, a switch of the mouse, etc. on the computer.
However, the display of such function select menu is not necessary to the audience or listeners and, rather, their attention is often distracted from the speaker's topic due to the display of unnecessary menu items, preventing an understanding of the audience.
In order to avoid such a situation, separate screens may be prepared one for the speaker and one for the audience, but a double preparation time is required in this connection. Furthermore, the memory capacity becomes double for such separate screen image data to be stored in memory.